The song that took Noel Gallagher 20 years to complete
It’s often easy to overlook Noel Gallagher’s talent as a songwriter, given he provides entertainment in so many areas. This happens when musicians are poetically outspoken, as people become so latched on what their opinions of others are that they forget the original reason that the artist became a part of the public’s conscience. This has happened with other artists, too, such as Noel’s brother and Oasis counterpart Liam, as well as the likes of John Lydon.
Given how entertaining many of them are, it’s easy to see why people become fixated on Noel’s ability to insult and poetically put his opinionated points across. Particular highlights include describing Liam Gallagher as “A man with a fork in a world of soup,” as well as lashing out at a Spice Girl, “Why is Posh Beckham writing a fucking book of her memoirs? She can’t even chew chewing gum and walk in a fucking straight line at the same time, let alone write a book.”
When these comments start to overshadow the music, it can be easy to forget just how talented songwriting Noel is, and while the millions of Oasis fans and lovers of his solo work will attest to as much, it is still a fact that bears repeating. He is responsible for some of the biggest tracks of recent decades that are now seen as singalong staples; he also treats his music with respect.
This is best represented in the fact that he won’t rush a song. Even when he has a chorus that he knows will work, if the rest of the song isn’t right, he will leave it until he has found the right way around the idea. He knows his music is something to take seriously, and so he does exactly that.
Consider the song ‘Lock All The Doors’, for instance, released on Noel’s 2015 solo album Chasing Yesterday. When Noel came out with his first helping of solo material, people assumed it was all work he had conjured in recent years, but this track had been in the songwriter’s head since before Oasis had made it big. With a few sections of the track that he knew would work but not enough to officially record it, the song lingered in his subconscious for years.
Some of the first instances of the track can be found in Noels notebooks from the early ‘90s that were sold at auction. “Half of it was used for the Chemical Brothers track,” recalled Noel, “I had that song knocking around from before we got signed. I thought ‘I’ll use that verse because it fits and I’ll write another one’. It took nearly 20 years.”
Inspiration struck Noel in the most unlikely of places, but when it did, he finally knew he had it and would be able to put out the song he had been sitting on for so long. “One afternoon I was coming out of the Tesco Metro in Maida Vale, where I live, and I don’t know what it was, but it just hit me, coming round the corner, just by Boots, it came to me in a flash of inspiration.”
